Fencing at the 20th Asian Games begins on 22 September, in a hall in Tokoname on the edge of Aichi Prefecture, Japan. When the sabre pools are called, two of the fencers walking to the piste in India's kit will be representing Jammu & Kashmir — and no sabre fencer from this Union Territory has ever done that at an Asian Games before.
Shriya Gupta and Vishal Thapar have been named in India's squad for the Games. Shriya is entered in both the Women's Sabre Individual and the Team event; Vishal is in the Men's Sabre Team event. The J&K Sports Council, which saw them off before they flew out, called it the first Asian Games selection for sabre fencers from the UT.
September 2026: the send-off
Before the pair left for Japan, the Council's Secretary, Tazayun Mukhtar Kawos, met them in person. “Meeting Shriya and Vishal before they leave for Japan was a proud moment for all of us,” Kawos said. “What they have achieved — becoming the first sabre fencers from J&K to reach the Asian Games — is the result of years of discipline and hard work.”
That last phrase is doing more work than it looks. Neither fencer got here through a local pipeline, because there isn't much of one.
July 2026: Hong Kong, and a fortnight in Patiala
This is the second India squad both have made in three months. In July, we reported their selection for the 2026 World Fencing Championships in Hong Kong, held from 22 to 30 July. Ahead of that, the Sports Authority of India sanctioned a 16-day preparatory camp at SAI NIS Patiala from 7 to 22 July, bringing the country's leading sabre, foil and epee fencers together; both were named to attend.
Their routes into the national reckoning run through two very different addresses. Shriya, a senior national gold medallist this season, trains at the Vijay Bharat Academy in Ahmedabad. Vishal, a Senior National Championship silver medallist, is based at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala. Between them they have spent this season near the top of India's sabre rankings — which is the only way onto a squad like this, because selection runs off results across a calendar of national trials rather than any regional quota.
What sabre actually is
Fencing has three weapons, and they are not interchangeable. In epee, the whole body is target and only the point scores. In foil, the target is the torso, and again only the point counts. Sabre is the fast one: the target is everything above the waist, including the head and arms, and you can score with the edge of the blade as well as the tip. Bouts are short, exchanges are decided in fractions of a second, and right-of-way rules mean two fencers can both land and only one point is awarded.
It is also, in India, a comparatively thin field — which cuts both ways. There is less competition for a squad place than in cricket or athletics, and correspondingly less infrastructure to produce a contender in the first place.
Why this lands here
There is no sabre club on a Jammu street corner. There is no school circuit feeding into a district squad. A young person in this city who watched an Olympic fencing clip and wondered how you start would struggle to find a straight answer locally — and the honest version of that answer, visible in both these careers, is that you currently leave. Ahmedabad and Patiala are where the coaching, the training partners and the competition volume are.
That is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. But it is also why two names on an Asian Games sabre squad matter more than a medal count would suggest. It is the difference between a sport being theoretically open to someone from Jammu and being demonstrably open. Every subsequent conversation about equipment grants, a coach posting or a piste in a Jammu indoor hall now has two examples attached to it.
What we don't know yet
A note on the limits of the reporting: none of the coverage of this selection gives the fencers' ages, home districts, or current coaches, and we are not going to guess at them. Both are described in official communications simply as representing Jammu & Kashmir. Anyone writing that either athlete is from a particular town is inventing it.
What's next, and when to watch
19 September — the Asian Games Opening Ceremony at Aichi-Nagoya.
22–27 September — the fencing programme, at the Aichi International Exhibition Center in Tokoname.
Shriya has two entries, individual and team; Vishal has one, in the men's sabre team event.
Team sabre is fought as a relay to 45 points across nine legs, so a single fencer's bad three minutes can be repaired by a teammate — and a good three minutes can win a tie outright. If you have never watched a sabre relay, it is the most immediately legible fencing there is: the lights, the shouting, and a scoreboard that moves.
Six days from now, two of the people making it move will be from here.
Sources: Greater Kashmir — J&K's Shriya Gupta, Vishal Thapar to represent India at 20th Asian Games; Greater Kashmir — set to represent India at Asian Games 2026; Fencing at the 2026 Asian Games — competition dates and venue; Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Organising Committee — competition schedule.
